Roller coasters always excited me and I looked forward to each thrilling ride. They were weeeeeeeee ew! whoop whoop whoop! adrenaline and fist pumping experiences; leaving me happier for the conveyance.
Today, as I wade, aftermath hurricane, through mountains of paperwork waste, financial slave trading, zero real help, frustration and unadulterated political buck-passing bullshit (really people, there is no way to sugar coat this), the realization that I am, once again, on a roller coaster of another kind; fighting for the recovery of my home and life and praying I don’t lose my mind in the bargain.
Yesterday, I fist pumped air, not for a joyous ride but for screaming past time; intent on beating a deadline I was uninformed of, to try to get my taxes lowered on what is left of my home, following being flooded out by hurricane Sandy.
After wasting time via phone with county officials, who either took up my allotted five second call time with telling me how great they were while putting me down for being a slothful laggard for “waiting til the last minute, ” or ones who never answered their calls at all and had their phone lines click right over to a message machine which said, ‘there is no more room for you…click.’ “Go online to file,” they said and rang off without any helpful instructions or ‘caution, the site might be down or glitching.’
Next leg of the coaster went down hill from the height of ‘thank God I finally have a computer and internet connection’ to ‘wtf shrieking’ as the first page informed, when I put in my section, lot and block numbers for my parcel, ‘property does not exist.’
Arrrrggghhh!
Five times I o.c.d.ed my way through input after input with this flatline part of the coaster with nada, zip, zilch results. No matter how many times I put figures, number and facts into the required fields and punched the hell out of the submit button, I was personna non grata.
“Probably payback for being the slothful-wait-til-the-last-minute-laggard,” I moaned.
Then I thought, ‘hmmm…well, there is some truth to there not being a home at that address..at least not one in which anyone could live since being completely flooded, molded and gutted to the studs.
Then the car picked up speed for the next upswing on the rails and I thought ‘PRINT! For God’s Sake PRINT! and run this sucker to the post office before it closes!’ Didn’t someone say ‘must be postmarked by May 1st’ in their rant about how negligent I was- even though I’d told them I’d never received notification- EVER!?!
Woohoo!
Dang!
Print-print-print I did, penned my own comments about help needed for all of us hurricane and flood survivors on the pages and, where it asked for real estate comparables in my area and what I thought was the value of my shell of an uninhabitable home, I refrained from raving about stopping victimizing the victims with placing more concrete boulders on our shoulders of work that was not ours but theirs to do and scrawled in large letters, “Lower the taxes and compare with all houses which were gutted and are now shells. Come down and look for yourselves.”
Went a bit b.s.c. cray-cray trying to find an envelope as the time ticked nearer to post office closing; said “Oh, what the hell!” as I ripped an envelope off a birthday card I had intended to send out and stuffed the papers inside, sealed and taped the sucker shut and mad dashed it to squeak in the near closing postal doors; out of breath, gasping “Hand cancel, please. It’s for taxes!”
Praying they wouldn’t deny the hand canceling request -which usually is the case, they said, “Oh, yes. we get that!”
Bingo bango stampo!
Out in the sun, I jumped and shouted, ” WooHoo!” and fist pumped air.
A guy sitting on a bench smiled at a 70 year old, white haired, wild woman going nuts; alighting from another roller coaster ride!
And just when I thought it safe to end the evening on the slide into the loading and unloading station, I see an email from the county tax reduction program, thanking me for my online application.
Uh-oh.
I wonder how many of those applications actually went through?
Here we go again, uphill chug chug chug, ready for the next ride on the coaster.
Better pack my sense of humor and, hopefully, so will they.
eFlorence 